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A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs HAProxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Thunder ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is 5.0%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 12.5%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

SatishBabu - PeerSpot reviewer
Known for its load balancing capabilities, the WAF features need to be improved
The solution's initial setup process was easy. For the installation, it takes around five minutes. One person can do the maintenance since it is not required much. So, it's a one-time solution, and its maintenance is fine. The number of people required for maintenance depends on the clients as well. One or two engineers are fine to serve around a hundred clients. If you have a number of devices, more people are needed for their maintenance because of the patching it requires during regular operations. Only for the maintenance, one engineer's fine. However, for regular operations, we need multiple people.
Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks
What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is flexible."
"The most valuable features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC are the ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and simplicity to sell to customers."
"It's a very friendly solution, easy to configure and it's very flexible."
"The ease of use is very good. It's very robust. It just sits and works."
"It is very useful to have a simple dashboard where you can login and look into what your traffic patterns are, then look and see what times of day you're experiencing the heaviest traffic. You can quickly identify if you are possibly having a security issue or security breach. It makes it very easy to use the box."
"Compared to F5, which I used about six years ago, the A10 is much easier when routing. You don't have to use the wildcard bits to route it between the different segments. It's much less troublesome to configure."
"The Deterministic CGNAT feature is valuable for us."
"The solution is user-friendly and the CLA troubleshooting is easier compared to other solutions."
"The technical support has been, in one word, perfect. Every time I call, I’m on the phone with a representative within five minutes who is highly skilled and willing to help, whether in the case of critical issues or simple advice."
"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime."
"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."
 

Cons

"A10 Networks Thunder ADC could improve on the Application Delivery Controller. it's not a fully-fledged web application firewall solution. For example, application data and support need to improve."
"The tool's load-balancing feature should improve."
"The costs can be quite high."
"The solution does logging, but the logging capacity is really small. Because we have a bunch of traffic here, we usually get a logging-side warning that "This many logs were lost because of the heavy traffic." If the logging was better, that would be very good."
"The user interface is not as pretty as it could be."
"In my opinion, they need to improve their cloud support. There is support for cloud, but not all functions are there, such as high-availability."
"There is room for improvement in the upgrading process. Sometimes we have to contact A10 for verification of some stuff."
"Currently, the solution's WAF features are fewer. They should consider increasing their WAF features."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."
"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is one of the features of the product that influence customers to use the product."
"The price of the maintenance support is too expensive."
"The pricing is a third of the price of the F5 competition."
"One of the main reasons for switching away from Cisco was the licensing model. A10 gives you global server load balancing for free, while Cisco charged a significant licensing fee for that."
"It is $7000 per unit for the support annually."
"We previously had F5 and switched because of costs."
"As for the initial investment in the hardware, F5 and A10 are quite similar now. For the current A10 solution, the initial cost was about $36,000. As for annual support, the F5 solution would be between $10,000 and $12,000, while the A10 is $2,200 a year for support."
"For the hardware and license, we paid $35,000 per box, which was a one-time cost. Then, for the Gold Support on the two boxes, we pay $9400 annually."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
University
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would recommend A10 Networks due that it delivers high performance in a small form factor to reduce OPEX with significantly lower power usage, rack space, and cooling requirements compared to oth...
Do you recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC?
I do recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It's very user-friendly, easy to configure, and flexible. It is a very useful solution - especially now, when a lot of employees are working remotely. I hav...
What do you like most about A10 Networks Thunder ADC?
A10 Networks Thunder ADC is an easy-to-use and flexible solution.
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
 

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

123inkt.nl, Bentley University, Box, Brainshark, Buienradar, Capgemini, CGN/LSN & NAT64, Chengdu Telecom, Club One, Code Ready, CRC Health Group, Cyso, Deutsche Telekom, Earth Class Mail, Excite, FFF Enterprises, Florence County, Framingham State University, From30
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.